


Somewhere I'm Going & Have Never Been Before

by Yahtzee



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Cabin Fic, Canon Compliant, Canon Disabled Character, Chess, Christmas, Comfort, Exes, Grief/Mourning, Hanukkah, M/M, Plague, Post-X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Remix, Rescue, Reunions, Sick Character, Sickfic, Soup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 22:16:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7951264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In late December 1984, Charles falls victim to the terrible pandemic sweeping across the globe. He's sick, probably dying, and utterly alone in an isolated cabin...until he's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere I'm Going & Have Never Been Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [professor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/professor/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Where The Heart Is](https://archiveofourown.org/works/634626) by [professor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/professor/pseuds/professor). 



**Winter 1984**

 

The drive from Washington, D.C. to Westchester County, New York took about four and a half hours if the driver obeyed the speed limit. Charles generally managed to clip a quarter hour off, perhaps a bit more.

That terrible December, he gave up after six days.

Interstates had been blocked by the National Guard in many places, by panicked mobs in others. Gas stations ran out of fuel and could not even estimate when more would arrive. Rumors swirled like snow in the winter wind, proclaiming one place deadly, then another. When power stations began to falter, cutting off the media in all its forms, the public terror only deepened.

And Charles could hardly think for the screams of the dying inside his head.

The day he could go no farther, he pulled off a back road in Pennsylvania into the parking lot of a local diner. Hands shaking, he went through his briefcase to find the syringe Hank had insisted he keep in case of extreme emergency. Charles injected the serum, then slumped over the steering wheel, hardly able to keep himself conscious as he waited for the telltale buzz of sensation in his lower body, and for the blessed silence in his mind.

As he stared dully through the snow-speckled windshield, his eyes focused on a newspaper that had blown against the corner. Despite its flapping cover page, Charles could make out the words, _Mutare Virus Declared Global Pandemic._ He'd seen that headline before.

 _That was three days ago_ , he thought. _How many more have died now? Thousands? Millions?_

_And how many mutants will be slaughtered in revenge?_

Despair dragged him down more surely than the fever ever could. His own imminent demise seemed irrelevant compared to the horrible fate awaiting humanity and mutantkind alike, and the death of all his most cherished dreams.

 _The children—I must get home to the children_. Nothing else mattered, and yet nothing seemed more impossible. _I ought to have let Hank or Raven accompany me like they wanted. No, I shouldn't have gone at all._

_I changed nothing._

_The virus destroyed everything._

The screams faded from his thoughts. Charles flexed one foot, then the other. His exercise regimen made sure these muscles didn’t atrophy past all use, but he had to be careful as he opened the car door and stepped outside. He wobbled—but was that weakness or illness? As best he could, Charles clutched his tweed blazer closed across his chest, then pressed his handkerchief to his face.

Before he had taken three steps toward the diner, someone emerged—a waitress in a pink uniform and white apron, complete with a paper cap. She might have been a costumed character from that sitcom the kids sometimes watched, "Alice." The only differences were the puffy insulated vest she wore over the uniform and the shotgun in her hands.

"We've got enough trouble here," she said, almost apologetically. "We're not taking on any more."

Charles let his jacket flap open so he could raise at least one hand in surrender. "I don't—" His sore throat choked off the words, and he had to swallow once, torturously, before he could finish. "I don't mean to impose. But—if you know of someplace I could go besides my car—anywhere, really—it would be a mercy."

The shotgun never wavered, but the waitress's eyes filled with tears. Charles realized only then that he had asked for a place to die.

It wasn't not as if he hadn't known. He'd been counting down his few remaining hours since that first moment two days ago, when his bones had begun to ache from the fever. But thinking of his death in such concrete, immediate terms—realizing he was reduced to begging for a warm place to merely lie down in his last moments—nothing could take away that sting.

The waitress turned away, and Charles thought that would end it. But then she said, "There's a log cabin up the way. They rent it out to fishermen in the summers; not likely anybody's there now. Keep going along this road, turn left right after the bridge."

"Thank you," Charles croaked. But she was already walking back inside, not looking back.

 

**

 

He drove using only the hand controls for his car; switching over to the standard settings would've taken too much time and more mental clarity than he could summon. The log cabin turned out to be closer than he'd dared hope—not even fifteen minutes' drive—and as the waitress had predicted, no one was there. Charles wondered if he'd have to break down the door, or whether he even could, but checking under a flowerpot revealed a spare key.

 _Take a good look_ , he told himself. Sunset was approaching, and with no electrical power, Charles could expect no more light until dawn, assuming he lived that long. Not a safe assumption, all things considered. _This is the last new place you'll ever see. It's sort of cozy, isn't it? Good, good._ Why did it matter whether or not this cabin was a pleasant place to be? But Charles took some shred of comfort in it.

Charles would have given much not to be alone. To have someone, _anyone_ with him...but that was impossible. The person he wanted with him most was the most impossible of all.

He stumbled through the wood-paneled main room, hardly ten feet by ten feet square. If only he had the strength to build a fire in the stone hearth—but he didn't, and he wouldn't. So he made his way to the even smaller bedroom, peeled down the coverlet, kicked off his shoes and slumped into bed.

His eyes closed, and he lacked the strength to open them again. But the mattress was soft, and the blankets warm. It would do.

 

**

 

_"Can you deny the Mutare Virus is spread by mutants?" Senator Kelly had shouted at Charles as he testified before Congress for the final time. Already many seats had been empty due to illness._

_"Humans and mutants alike spread the virus." Charles had looked from senator to senator, trying to find one receptive, sympathetic mind. But their panic ran too deep. "In mutants, the virus evolves far more swiftly, and seems to be intensifying in this way, but we mutants are no more contagious than anyone else."_

_"But you're making it worse."_

_"Did children with polio make that epidemic deadlier?" Charles' voice had risen. "Were they to blame for their fellows' paralysis or death? Of course not! Blaming the victims of a disease for suffering the effects of that disease--including contagion--'it's irrational. Worse, it's cruel."_

_Kelly had tilted his head, studying Charles as he might have an exhibit in a museum of oddities. "To me, the better comparison seems to be with, what do they call it, 'gay plague', AiDS, they have in San Francisco, New York, the big cities--proof that an abnormal lifestyle leads to disastrous results. But this time, the harm isn't confined to those who behave badly. No, you're taking us down with you."_

_Rage had set Charles' temples throbbing, and he gave up all pretense of politeness. "How dare you, sir. How dare you blame gay men and hemophiliacs and Haitians for suffering from a deadly disease? How dare you look at mutant children and say they have less right to live because of how they were born? How_ dare _you proclaim that the price of nonconformity is death!"_

_"You wouldn't agree that a threat should be eradicated?"_

_"We won't be so easily eradicated, Senator. I promise you this: If you declare mutants a threat, we will by God become one."_

_"You're endangering us. All of you, just by existing. If we killed you all, we'd be safer. We should kill every one of you, starting now."_

_No. That last bit--that wasn't how it had gone. The hearing had been bad, but not_ that _bad. Yet Charles couldn't extricate himself from this nauseating muddle of memory and dream._

 _Senator Kelly had smiled with bloody teeth—that wasn't real, wasn't right, but Charles could_ see _them. The screams in his mind became louder, shrieked higher. "Let's start with your students."_

_"No, please—not the children, not my—"_

"Shhh." Strong arms embraced Charles, lifted him up. The warm voice that had haunted other dreams spoke gently now. "It's all right."

"They're going after the school."

"Your pupils can defend themselves. And Hank's idea panned out."

What idea? Charles felt like he ought to remember that, like he'd spoken about it with Hank not so long ago, but he couldn't put it together. His eyes were open, he thought, but the room was so dark that it made no difference. He seemed to be adrift in the fog of fever. "You'll save them. I always knew you would if you—if you had to—"

"Yes. Always. Now sleep, Charles." A hand brushed over Charles' smooth scalp, a touch so comforting it banished his fears. "Rest."

Charles obeyed, falling back into a slumber too deep for dreams.

 

**

 

He awoke later—much later, he thought, though there was no way to tell—to the sound of a crackling fire. Charles moved feebly beneath the blankets; even sitting up felt beyond his power, but the marrow-deep ache of fever had faded. The bedroom door stood open, allowing firelight to paint this room golden. And on the side table, one candle burned beside a glass of water. Briefly Charles thought of fairy tales in which people awoke to find kindly magical creatures had put right whatever was wrong.

Though the figure he could make out now as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, the man lying on the pallet on the floor—he was both more awe-inspiring and more real than anything to be found in fairy tales.

Through his chapped lips, Charles whispered, "Erik."

Instantly Erik was awake. He pushed himself up on his forearms. "You're conscious. You know me. Thank God."

"--I don't remember when—Erik, how did you get here?"

Erik shifted to the side of the bed and laid one hand on Charles' forehead. "I'd been looking for you since you failed to call in three days ago."

"But—how would you know I hadn't rung the school—"

"I went there in case I was needed. They're all safe. You were the one in trouble. And you're still badly dehydrated. Get as much of this down as you can." Erik brought the glass of water to Charles' lips. Charles obeyed as best he could, then fell back onto his pillow. Erik's fingers stroked Charles' scalp, a touch that had nothing to do with seeking fever, as he quietly added, "You used Hank's serum. The one that takes away your telepathy and allows you to walk."

"How you hate the stuff," Charles muttered. "But so many deaths—so much terror and grief—"

"Always so sure that I've judged you and found you wanting," Erik said, as though Charles could have no reason for expecting this. "You did the right thing. What's happening in the world now…no, you couldn't have endured it. No one could. And if you hadn't been able to walk, you might not have made it inside this cabin, and then—" His voice broke off. When he spoke again, he was kinder, slower, as if speaking to a child. "Can you go back to sleep?"

"I think so," Charles said. He passed out again even as he spoke the last word.

 

**

 

Hours later, memory flooded into Charles with consciousness and the morning sunshine, and he sat up in bed. "Erik?"

"Right here," Erik called from the front room of the cabin. "The cabin has a gas stove. I'm making us something to eat."

It occurred to Charles then that he felt hungry. That his throat, although still sore, was merely tender. The heavy, skull-crushing headache he'd had since coming down with the Mutare virus had gone away, hopefully for good. So had his fever.

Gingerly he set his feet on the floor. The wooden planks creaked beneath his socks. Charles realized he wore only his undershirt and boxers; Erik had managed to undress him at some point during the night.

He told himself, _you know you're bad off when you don't even notice Erik Lehnsherr getting you naked._

Although his legs wobbled beneath him, Charles was able to wrap a blanket around his shoulders and make his way into the front room. The fire blazed in the hearth, radiating enough heat to make the entire cabin cozy. Erik wore jeans and a half-buttoned plaid shirt as he stood in the kitchen—really just a corner with a stove, fridge and cabinets. A blue and white speckled stockpot sat on the front burner, bubbling and smelling delicious.

"Where on earth did you manage to buy groceries?" Charles settled himself onto the old sofa.

"I grabbed a few things on my way here, just in case." The way Erik said this hinted that _grabbed_ might be less a synonym for _bought_ , more for _stole_. Given the circumstances, Charles wasn't going to press the point. "The turkey I shot early this morning."

Charles frowned. "Since when do you carry guns?"

"Since when do I need a gun? Easy enough to make a dart from a few rusty nails."

The last time they parted had been their friendliest break in two decades. Even as Erik had turned to leave the rebuilt mansion, Charles had believed there was half a chance he might stay. If they had not achieved a full reconciliation, they had at least come to…a truce. Maybe even a peace. Yet Charles still found himself unprepared for the simple intimacy of Erik finding him, nursing him, making him turkey soup.

He said only, "The Mutare Virus situation has changed. If it hadn't, you wouldn't be here."

Erik didn’t look up from the soup he was stirring. "They broadcast the Senate hearing, you know. Over and over. The way you stood up for us—declared you would protect our people if we were scapegoated for the random evolution of a virus—I couldn't have done it better myself. Sometimes I forget that you fight this battle too, in your own way. Quieter. Slower than I'd like. But you fight all the same."

Leave it to Erik to say something like this when Charles was already unsure, off-balance. He managed to reply, "I learnt defiance from the best."

"You listened to me more than I thought you did," Erik said, so smugly that it would've been infuriating...if it weren't also true. And Charles liked seeing his old friend's smile again.

But the present stakes were far larger than their connection. "That hearing changed nothing. If anything, I made the situation worse."

"Hardly," Erik said. "You bought us time. And Hank put that time to good use."

Realization struck. "His idea about the viral sheath panned out? He's developed a cure?"

"A treatment. It doesn't always provide a full cure; it doesn't prevent everyone from being infected. But it works for a large majority of people, human and mutant alike. The government already has the treatment in mass production; Hank happily turned over all his samples except one."

"The one you brought to me," Charles said. It wasn't a question.

"Injected it last night, right after I found you," Erik confirmed. He shook some black pepper into the soup. "You were so far gone you didn't even feel the needle."

His voice hoarsened on the last words. How much fear Erik must have felt, and how much must survive between them for that to be true—

But they couldn't get into that at the moment, or maybe ever. "Thank you," Charles whispered, before becoming more brisk. "Hank reached out to, who, the Surgeon General? The media?"

Erik's wooden spoon stilled in the soup. "Ah. Well. Actually, someone had to get Hank's materials directly to the president. As in, inside the White House. Which isn't that easily done, so—"

"You?" Charles sat up straighter on the couch. "You were the one who shared the treatment for the Mutare Virus with the world?"

Erik frowned as though he'd been accused of some petty crime. "It was the best move for everyone," he insisted. "Mutant and human alike."

Slowly Charles began to smile, suffused with an even greater joy than he'd felt at his own survival. "So while I was declaring war on mankind if they threatened mutants, you were benevolently distributing a cure to the entire planet and building a bridge between mutants and humans forever."

"Not _benevolently_ ," Erik said, as if that absolved him of all do-gooding.

Charles slumped back onto the cushions, comforted in every way a person could be. "It's a miracle."

"You gentiles do begin believing in miracles at Christmas."

"Wait. It's Christmas?" The passage of days had become so foggy for him, but that sounded almost right.

"Christmas Eve," Erik confirmed. "Are you going to make me gather a pine tree, or boughs of holly?"

"Not necessary. This is already the most beautiful Christmas of my life."

Erik looked over at him then, gaze gentled, finally dropping his guard. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

 

**

 

The turkey soup might not have been the most delicious meal Charles ever had in his life, but none had ever been prepared with more love or consumed with more enjoyment. They talked a little more about the school, mostly about how Hank had comforted the smaller children while Mystique kept the older ones in line by making them feel responsible and important.

"The psychic trauma was hard on Jean," Erik confirmed as he finished his own meal. "She began using the serum even before you did."

"Good." Charles ought to have called to her telepathically when the first wave of deaths began. But he'd been fighting so hard to shield himself against the intense tides of sorrow and terror that he lacked the power to reach out to anyone else. His only consolation was that Jean would have been trying to shield herself, too. "What's the larger situation?"

"Millions dead," Erik said heavily. "They're likening it to the Spanish flu nearly seventy years ago. The same mass graves, even greater system disruptions. But the tide has turned. Fortunately the treatment's fairly easy to make and administer. Most of the West Coast had power again by the time I found you; I'd imagine the lights will work here within another day or so."

"So we've come back from the brink."

"It appears so."

"Thanks to Hank, and to you."

Erik still wouldn't accept his role as humanity's savior. "All that matters is, humans know it was mutants who saved them from this virus. Maybe that undoes some of the harm from En Sabah Nur."

"Maybe so." Charles could already imagine the possibilities. Instead of turning them into pariahs, the Mutare Virus might turn out to be the thing that set mutants free forever.

_I ought to have expected it. The nature of the virus was change, after all. Why should this transformation be any more surprising?_

 

**

 

That afternoon, Charles napped again and woke at twilight feeling even better than before. After long consideration, he took one more injection of the serum that would preserve his mobility while dampening his telepathy; his condition might be improving rapidly, but some weakness lingered. Another day or two of silence would let his mind heal along with his body.

Erik seemed to have slept on the sofa for a while; no doubt he'd spent a restless night while nursing Charles. Now he seemed refreshed, as nearly cheerful as Erik ever became. And he even grinned when he saw what Charles found looking through the trunk that served as the cabin's coffee table."

"Up for a game?" Charles lifted the battered cardboard box marked CHESS SET. "I'm not back to my old self quite yet, you know. So you actually stand a chance."

"Don't expect any mercy on that account."

"As if I would," Charles retorted. Both of them were pretending to still be at odds--playfully, now, but it was as if they couldn't let it go.

At least, not yet.

The chess set had seen better days, many of them. Creases marred the unfolded board, and a few of the plastic pieces had gone missing, requiring them to scrounge from other games. A "bomb" piece from Stratego stood in for one of the black rooks, while the part of the white king was played by a blue car from the game of Life.

"We could've just used coins," Erik pointed out as he weighed his opening move.

Charles scoffed. "And have you slide them around the board while I'm not looking?"

Erik grinned again at the joke. They both knew that as ruthlessly as Erik played, he never cheated.

"It's been—what—just over a year since our last game." Charles thought back to that final day at the school. "But we fit so many matches into those six weeks, didn't we?"

"I needed the distraction. It was good of you."

That allusion needed to be followed up on, but this was too important to rush. So only after several moments, and one move from the white knight, did Charles say, "How are you holding up?"

"Some days are better than others. Sometimes I even think of Magda and Nina with as much pleasure as pain. What they brought to my life—I still have the memories. And a wise man once taught me not to put such memories aside." Erik's gaze went distant as he continued, "Other days are harder. Tonight—it's the seventh night of Chanukah. Magda and I celebrated with Nina every year, exactly the way my parents did with me. I keep imagining her little hands helping to light the candle—"

Erik broke off and stared down at the board. Charles rested his hand on Erik's arm. He said nothing, because no words could ever really console anyone for such a loss, much less Erik, who had suffered so much even before losing his wife and child.

 _He'd found some faith in the world again_ , Charles thought. _Erik would never have married Magda, much less had a child with her, if he hadn't allowed himself to_ hope. _And to have it all stolen away again—how is he still sane? Still alive?_

Tears pricked at Charles' eyes, but he blinked them back. Erik would hate that.

But then Erik surprised him once more by saying, "Thank you."

"…for what?" Not crying? Had he been that obvious?

"For giving the good memories of my parents back to me. I'd suppressed them for so long. When I thought about them, I thought only about how they died. Not how they lived. You changed that, Charles. And who I was as a father—what I was able to give Nina—it wouldn't have been the same without those memories." Erik shook his head as he took Charles' hand, openly emotional with him this one precious time. "Thank you so much."

Charles didn't think, just acted on instinct, lifting Erik's hand to his lips and kissing it. The kiss wasn't romantic, of course, nor was Erik's touch. But it was a first step on a path they had traveled together more than once.

Could it ever lead to a different destination? The place Charles had dreamed of for them, but where they had never been before?

Long moments passed before Erik pulled his hand away. Instead of making his next move on the chessboard, however, he brought his palm to Charles' forehead. "Still no fever," he murmured. "You're all but recovered, Charles."

"Almost anything can heal given the right cure," Charles said, "and time, and warmth and care."

He wasn't only talking about his illness, and Erik obviously knew it. A small smile appeared on Erik's face. "Do you really believe that's true?"

The fire blazed in the hearth. Snow frosted the windowpanes outside, but the chill was kept far away. What had been only a place to die now felt like a place to be reborn. Charles smiled back and said, "Let's see."

 

 

THE END


End file.
